so they are miles apart and obviously the optics of being out of town when there's steep cuts to the pentagon and other government programs is not great but it's really an oversimplification of the issue. >> molly, what about the plan put forth earlier this week, the $110 billion plan to avert the sequester. is that going to gain any traction? >> i doubt it. republicans have already basically said that's dead on arrival and as jake said it's not like they were getting anything done here in washington before they went on vacation. there really hasn't been any progress. there are no negotiations, nobody's talking to each other. you have these one-sided plans being put together and then they sort of get lobbed over the fence and the other side says eh, no. we're a long way from a constructive dialogue happening between the parties on capitol hill. >> jake in a piece yesterday you wrote "house republicans say if they spend the next two years like they spent the past two they'll become irrelevant." who are the most prominent republicans leading this charge toward as you put it irrelevancy? >> towa